Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 3, 17 October 1890, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Abb we, indeed, to take tha address delivered on showing thbir Friday evening to the electors of the Peninsula by tbeth ? Mr. Earnahaw as an expression of the principles on which the candidates of the labour p»rty will seek to be returned to Parliament ? If ao, we must admit that they have forced us into opposition against them. The programme drawn out by the gentleman in question, who, nevertheless, with modesty and, let u§ hope, with truth, confeasas himself not to be " beat fitted " to represent his class in Parliament, ia of an extreme character, and contains many points that may be looked upon as questionable. About one of its points, however, there can be no question at all, and it is thia point with which we are now concerned. The nationalisation of the land, the nationalisation of labonr, and any other proposals there may be generally connected with a probable Utopia, we shall leave for the present untouched. All we shall cay is that a Utopian programme placed in incapable or inexperienced bands would be likely to lead to results that must prove very undesirable. What we are concerned with is the particular point contained in the following passage, which we take from the report of the speech given by the Daily Timet :— " On the question of edncation, he was in favour of a secular and compulsoiy system that should be free, both as regards fees and school requisites, up to the Seventh Standard. No scholars should be allowed to attend tbe high schools who bad not passed the Sixth Standard, and High School tuition should be free to all who could pass an approved standard at 14 years, and the university free to all who could pass an approved standard. He was opposed to denominational grants and to the Bible-reading in schoois, but would support the granting of the use of the school buildings, outside school hours, for Bible teaching by proper persons."— We have heard of the merits of the virtuous Scandinavians— more deserving of praise, perhaps, if the truth were known, than even the blameless Ethiopians of Homeric fame, who spend two-thirds of their revenue yearly on education. Here, however, we have apparently a proposal that we ourselves ihould become more meritorious still and expend our entire revenue in like manner But even this proposal may be passed over as at worst doubtful. There is no room whatever to doubt as to the nature of Mr. Earnshaw's support of secnlarism. It is pronounced and extreme. This gentleman, who comes forward as a champion of right and an opponent of unfair privileges, declares himself, notwithstanding this, a supporter of cruel wrong and an advocate of oppression and plunder. The man is no friend of justice, we Bay, who would Dot extend its privileges to all alike, or who would exclude any class of his fellow-citizens from its complete enjoyment. There can be no true justice where there is not liberty of conscience, and where secularism is enforced by law and those who cannot avail themselves of its provisions without a sacrifice of conscience are subjected to heavy penalties,Buch liberty doss not exist. What sympatby,therefore, can men rationally claim who, while they themselves complain of being treated nnfairly and deprived of their just rights as citizens, prove that they in turn consent to the deprivation and ill-treatment of others, and are prepared to carry such measures out, if they attain to power, in even an aggravated form ? If Mr. Earnshaw represents the labour party, and is a fair sample of the candidates it is their intention to return, the Catholic community has reason to dread tbe success of the party more than that even of the most determined secularists who have as yet opposed their just claims in Parliament. We cannot shut our eyes to tbe fact that the programme brought forward by thia gentleman is identical with Socialism in its evil form, with Socialism, the declared enemy of religion, and, therefore, the parent of anarchy and social ruin. Nevertheless, if the working men are to succeed in finally improving their condition, it can only be by the aid of religion they will do so. It will need, on the part of the other classes in society, many sacrifices and much self-control to yield to their necessities, and in religion alone is to be found the source of such qualities. The ultimate success of irreligious and anarchic Socialist!* is an impossibility. Some period of triumph it may be

capable of ; nay, it may possibly have. The opposition with whioh it must be encountered may possibly drive it in desperation to succeaafal revolution. Anarchy, however, cannot prove lasting and as history also abundantly teaches, tyranny is its necessary outoome. But under such conditions the last state of the working men would be worse than their first. We do not, meantime, believe that there is much chance that the working men of New Zaaland, supposing them to acknowledge as their own such a programme as that brought forward by Mr. Earoshaw, could be successful. The sure results of such a step would be to band all other classes of the community together against them. There would probably be some difference of opinion a? to the general policy, although a policy of experiment, or perhapseven a policy of fads, announced by them, and members of the Catholic community, for example, might also be found willing or even anxious to promote it. There can be no doubt in the miad of any Catholic worthy of the name as to the obligation he is under to give his strenuous opposition to a policy that proposes to maintain in an aggravated form the educational disabilities under which he now labours, and to increase very considerably the burden from which he suffers. If Mr. Earnshaw, in a word, is a genuine representative of the labour party, that party has chosen as their own the programme adopted by European anarchists, un jer the influence of the atheistic Freemasons of t c Continent, for the destruction of Christianity and the ruin of society. The apotnsosis of the irreligious State, or rather of the mob, for the paople broken loo3a from the influencas of religion and violently straining after worldly advantages as thair oaly good, necessarily become a mere mob, has no other meaning. We are therefore, forced by the nature of their programme, if Mr. Earnahaw rightly interprets it, to give the cindiiature of the labour representatives our strongest opposition. No Catholic could possibly support it without compromising his conscienca as a Catholic and striking a wicked blow at his Church. We regret extremely that such conclusions have been forced upon us. We had hoped, perhaps against hope, for better things, — but so it is.

We had occasion recently to refer to an outburst A rebuke fob of bigotry at Wellington. We allude, as our bigots A.T readers will probibly remembar, to a letter pubwbllington. lished by the Evening Press in which a Swigs correspendent made some incredible statements, and to a leader in tbe same newspaper accepting these statements as unvarnished truth and sapiently commenting on them. It seems to us, therefore, appropriate to quote, as giving an irrefutable coutradictioa of such unscrupoulons bigotry as that referred to, the following extract, which m"st necessiiily suggest to all who read it what the influences of the Catholic Ohurah aai of Catholic ecclesiasfcs really are in Switzerland, as well as elsewnere. This extract occurs in the shape of a letter addressed by Mr. John Ferguson of Glasgow, a member of the Presbyterian Church to the Scottish Leader :—: — ''There is a Christlike man called Cardinal Manning. Though a Papist, we Protestants would be nothing the worse of his teaching and a great deal the better of his spirit. In a letter to M. Descurtins, a Swiss statesman, this great Englishman says :— ' You have been the first to bring home to the conscience of Europe the condition of millions whose life is one round of ceaseless toil. All political questions are subordinate in importance to those you have treated — the labour of children and women, Sunday labour and tbe hours of labour. Hitherto these questions have been regulated by cheap productions. 1 have saiJ married women ara by their marriage contract engaged to attend to family cares and their children, and have no right to contract themselves to wjrk ia violation of their contract as wives and mothers. You have well thought out this moral law, without which we should have a horde instead of a nation. Witoout domestic life there cvx b 3 do nation. As long as the hours of labour are only regulated by the masters' gains no working miti can enjoy an existence worthy of a human being. The humblest worker, as well a 9 the wealthy and the cultured, has need of some hours to improve his mind, othwise he becomes a machine or beast of burthen. What sort of nation will such men form? What can be the domestic, social, or political life of such men ? And yet to this the individualism and

political economy of the last 50 years hare led us.'— Humanity mourns with Rome the death of Nevrman. With Rome, humanity still rejoices in the possession of Manning. Population must look to its position. We have philosophers and others outside the Churches doing Christ's work. We have, lam glad to know, many Protestant clergymen in sympathy with ' the Christ that is dying at oar gate ' ; bat where in our Protestant churches have we a commanding man like this great Roman Prince to tell the chief priests and rulers and kings that British civilisation has a higher object than merely producing cheaper cotton and steel goods, with which to grind down by competition foreign working men and women ; that making the lives of our workers subservient to the growth of wealth is a suicidal error ; that man is the chief object of national existence — not a class bat the whole mass of men ; that any trade which cannot be carried on without necessarily injuring its workers or others has no right to be used at all ; that no human form has a right to grow beautiful, cultivated, and refined by using other human forms as mere manure for its growth ; that cotton and steel are to be the servants, not the masters of men ; and that the welfare of the whole population, not classes only, is the highest ideal of civilisation." — Yet Cardinal Manning in addressing thiß Swiss statesman, himself, an example of the results of Catholic teaching in Switzerland, is guided by the same principles by which the priests who lead their flocks in Catholic cantons are guided. So much then for the truth of men, correspondents or editor?, who brand these cantons, because they are Catholic, with barbarism.

"After a sojourn of many months among the A sinister Druses of Lebanon (says the London Daily TeleSURVIVAL, graph'), the Rev. Haskett Smith, M.A,, formerly of Camberwell, is about to return with an important discovery made under romantic circumstances concerning that mysterious people who are supposed to be lineal descendants of the Hittites. It appears that Mr. Smith was admitted to the most secret intimacy with the Druses through having saved ths life of a popular young man by sucking the venom of a deadly snake bite from his body. He was initiated into a number of mysterious rites hitherto unknown to any foreigner, and among these the natives startled him M a Freemason by passing the most characteristic of Masonic signs, from all which this adventurous clergymm augurs that the Druses are none other than the rural branch of the great Phoenician race whose ancestors supplied the Lebanon cedars to the building of King Solomon's Temple." And a very appropriate origin for the Freemasons, we must admit, is thus discovered. What can be more appropriate than that a society the sworn enemy of religion in the modern world, and whose raison d'etre is the propagation of atheism should have originated among those heathen peoples of the ancient world whom God destroyed for their abominable wickedness ? We need have no difficulty in recognising among the Lodges a survival of the spirit of the Hittites, or, indeed, in acknowledging their more immediate relationship to the heathen Druses, the bitter and bloodBtained enemies of the Christians who dwell in their neighbourhood. It is interesting, meantime, to learn that the malediction " Cursed be Canaan" remains, more or less, in foree — notwithstanding the emancipation of the negroes.

Who are the Catholics in New Zealand who are so BIBALDBY in constituted as to derive edification from the paradthe ing of the memory of a respected Irish priest— catholic press, even before his body, as the saying is, is yet cold in tbe graye — in the insulting garb of the stage Irishman ? Still, we have it on high authority, that nothing is to be found in the colmnns of the newspaper to which we allude but what is edifying and instructive, or wholesomely amusing, to the readerEven the innocent school child, we have been told, may derive profit combined with pleasure from their perusal. It is profitable, then, we must conclude, to the innocent mind that even the sanctuary should be forced to contribute to its hilarity— that is, perhaps, when the associations are Irish, for, doubtless, a line will be drawn somewhere. We shall not find, for example, the h's that Bcatter the floor from a Cockney tongue, or the patois of French provinces quoted for such a purpose. The Irishman is the ready-made stage-property of every Bneeringly humorous Anglo-Saxon, and even the vestments of the altar, as we see, cannot hide him from being hauled forward, dead or alive to provoke the time-honoured grin. Was the late Very Reverend Father to whom we allude— for though we for our part, cannot, like the correspondent iv question, claim to have enjoyed a more than ordinary share of his personal friendship and interest— we shrink from naming him in such a connection— was he really distinguished by habitually preferring a " dhudeen "to an ordinary pipe ? But here, lumped together, are the elegant passages to which we now particularly refer, and which strike us as all the more offensive from the tone of affectionate patronage in which they are put forward. An excellent priest truly, says our correspondent, in effect, was this good old father notwithstanding his Irish vulgarity :—": — " When his elevation to the rank of prelate of the Papal household was announced

to him he was much troubled. ' A fig for their Monsignore,' said he, sure you can't take off your hat in the streets of Rome without poking wan of them in tbe eye. They'd much better leave ma to end me days in peace and quietness.' " — Tramps, " poor craytures," as we are told he called them, were objects of much compassion to the unappreciative Monsignore — and here is how he served and was served by one of them. — " Then Father ■, in his racießt brogue said :— ' Now, me poor man, you're no doubt in a bad way. Poverty ia no disgrace, and labour is a glory to any man. Here's half-a-crown for you —take this spade and dig for half an hoar in the garden, and then be aff wid ye to look for work I ' " — The tramp, however, disappeared. — '■ And if the blagyard hadn't taken me beautiful spade as well as me half-crown I ' was the victim's comment when he told the story." —And all this is reported, apparently in good faith, though somewhat condescendingly, by a correspondent who claims to have been an especial favourite of the venerable ecclesiastic, and to have derived great benefits from his teaching and example. We may add that it is rather remarkable that the correspondent attributes to the priest a rank he did not posses?— even repot ting verbatim, and with all tbe details of mispronunciation, his alleged words on receiving intelligence of his elevation— an elevation that never toot place. Eels get used to skinning. — Irishmen, as our superior friends of Anglo-Saxon origin or proclivities seem to think, take pleasure in being coarsely caricatured and turned into ridicule, even in tbe persons of their most venerable representatives. But let us find what good we may in the matter." The " good little English children " for whose edification these sparkling anecdotes are narrated will no doubt agree with both correspondent and editor that the deceased prelate, who was no prelate, we say again, was an excellent priest, even although he was such an " Irish Paddy." " Good little English children," and those who are like-minded with them, however, are the only Catholics in New Zealan dcapable of being edified by this intermingling of the stags and the sanctuary, to which we allude. In no shape that is not insulting to genuine Irishmen can the stage Irishman be brought forward — and of all the shapes in which he can possibly appear that of the Irish priest is most offensive to them.

A line published on one of Mr. Toole's play -bills the old at the Princess Theatre, Dunedin, has recalled to queen s. us memories that now seem almost of another world. And, indeed, it was another world, that Ireland of thirty or forty years ago ; in all its ways as unlike our hemisphere of the period, as if, alas, it had belonged to another planet. We must, however, admit that the Ireland of those days would no more have suited the young people among ourselves, than would the colonies of the present day suit the youth of the by-gone generation. Young Ireland — we make no political reference — was not up to everything on earth, and in its own conceit at least, to not a little more besides. Boys were boys, and girls were girls, and a riper experience! than that of their grand-fathers and grandmothers was not prematurely in their possession. The line, however, to which we illude, is that in which we are informed, in a sketch of Mr. Toole's career, that his first engagement had been at the Queen's Theatre in Dublin. The old Queen's, in its time, Baw the beginning of more than one creditable and prosperous career — aod in theatrical aunals its memory should hold an honourable place. It was the second and smaller, but much the more lively, of the Dublin theatres. Mr. Webb, the manager, must have been both enterprising and clever. His stage was always well provided for, and his house was always full. The Theatre Loyal, on the contrary, regarded as the more respectable house by the higher classes of the city, was often empty. We have more than once seen really good actors play there to vacant benches. Even when the late Dion Boucicault first produced the " Colleen Bawn " there, in the spring of 1861, his wife, Miss Agnes Robertson, acting with him and aiding much to the success of the play, in which we doubt if her part has ever since been so well filled, we have seen but a thin audience present. The hour of the Theatre Royal was, however, during the yearly season when the Italian Opera was in Dublin. All the fashion of the country flocked there then, and tbe glory of the " gods" was great. And nowhere has Italian opera been more finely produced ; nowhere have the casts been more splendid. We have seen, for instance, " Don Giovanni " brought out there with Titiens as Donna Anna, Maria Piccolomini as Zerlina, Giuglini as tenor, and Grasiani as baritone, and with a singer of note in every minor character. The orchestra, too, under the leadership of Richard Levey, was always up to the mark. Levey he called himself, as he, indeed, has publicly explained, because he found that in his youth an Irieh name was a hindrance and impeded all chance of success in London, where he had gone to seek his fortune. The " gods," however, had little consideration for the Bhifts to which genius had been put. " What i Bi ß the Italian for O'Shaugbnessy," was commonly their cry when the leader of the orchestra made bis appearance. Perhaps in those earlier days, had the expedient been known of eliminating superfluous letters from our sonorous Irish names and giving them a pronunciation more pinched but more genteel— the subititution, for

example, of Shanessy for O'Shanghnessy, not unknown to our own colonies, if we mistake |not — might have satisfied Anglo-Saxon requirements. The " gods," nevertheless, were intelligent and sym. pathetic. When the occasion demanded it of them, none knew bettei how to conduct themselves. Lady Martin has placed on record their appreciation of her, when, as Miss Helen Faucitt, she played to a Dublin audience. We ourselves were personally witness to the delight of SignorMario when, in his decline, they gave him an ovation he could not nave more than merited in the hey-day of his renown. Mr. Santley, then magnificent in his prime, sang with him, but the repeated encores and the cheers and plaudits were for the veterani hardly a shadow, except in the exquisite grace of his acting which still remained, of bis former self. It was the past the kind-hearted crowd applauded, recognising, with infinite delicacy and tact, the needs of the present. •' Quels gentils diables ! " — The delighted exclamation of the old tenor well described them. — But to return to the Queen's. Many actors and actresses eminent at the time, or to attain eminence thereafter, trod its boards, as well as Mr. Toole.— Mr. Billington, has also been engaged tbere. Some we remember, but more, after the lapse of so many years, we have forgotten. Robson, for example, we recollect, and Walter Montgomery and G. V. Brooke. As to the ladies who appeared there, our principal recollection is that of Miss Lydia Thompson, then in the flower of her talent and the height of her beauty — a beauty, indeed, not easily to be matchedWe thought her also at the time the personification of all that was graceful, and the illusion lasted, for it seems it was an illusion, until some two or three years ago, when it was dispelled by Miss Lydia Thompson herself. In an interview, at that date, with the representative of some London newspaper— the Pall Mall Gazette, if we recollect aright— the lady declared that at the very period we recall she had looked, when on the stage, exactly like a tub. To give a shock like this io the susceptibilities of a by-gone generation, we protest, was a bard-hearted act. For half a life-time to cherish the memory of a sylph-like form, and then to be told, on the highest authority— on the word of the sylph herself— that the memory cherished was that of a tub 1 Surely the situation is pitiable. We can now at least appreciate the consideration of people who write memoirs only to be published when they and their contemporaries have passed awayNone of them, at least, can mortify t\n declining years of anyone with a spectre — a spectre, par exemple, of a tub ! Many memories, therefore, are recalled by the mention of the old Queen's. If we are rightly informed, it no longer exists, but the fame attained by many of thoße who have played there must form its lasting monument.